To the most respected and revered man in my world, thank you for your undaunted persistence in following your OWN heart, and listening deeply to that which moved your soul. It was the most fantastic journey of a lifetime, creating a world rich, beautiful and utterly sublime. You are peerless sir. It is because of your humanity.

To a beautiful and humble spirit Who had opened his heart to a fathomless Divine And through his given visions brought us, Through his music of words, A vast world of riches that we explore With abandon in wonder and awe to find The transcendent beauty of a world and a humanity, Enriching our own.

''The Nameless Land

There lingering lights do golden lie On grass more green than in gardens here, On trees more tall that touch the sky With silver leaves a swinging clear: By magic dewed they may not die Where fades nor falls in the endless year, Where ageless afternoon goes by O'er mead and mound and silent mere. There draws no dusk of evening near, Where voices move in vailed choir, Or shrill in sudden singing sheer. And the woods are filled with wandering fire......''

''Day came pale from the East. As the light grew it filtered through the yellow leaves of the mallorn, and it seemed to the hobbits that the early sun of a cool summer's morning was shining. Pale-blue sky peeped among the moving branches. Looking through an opening on the south side of the flet Frodo saw all of the valley of the Silverlode lying like a sea of fallow gold tossing gently in the breeze.''

''Poor old Willow-man, you tuck your roots away! Tom's in a hurry now. Evening we follow day. Tom's going home again water -lillies bringing. Hey! Come derry dol! Can you hear me singing?''

''When Sam awoke, he found that he was lying on some soft bed, but over him gently swayed wide beechen boughs, and through their young leaves sunlight glimmered green and gold. All the air was full of a sweet mingled scent.''

''They stepped out of the beech grove in which they had lain, and passed on to a long green lawn, glowing in sunshine, bordered by stately dark-leaved trees laden with scarlet blossoms. Behind them they could hear the sound of falling water, and a stream ran down before them between flowering banks and passed then on under an archway of trees, through which they saw the shimmer of water far away.''

''Wonder

A resacralization of living nature, and living in nature, is of course a matter of re-enchantment. Its hallmark is the kind of non-utilitarian, open-ended response that I have called, and after Tolkien, wonder: as in, 'the realization, independent of the conceiving mind, of imagined wonder.' C.N. Manlove is right that 'there is a very definite and constant character to fantasy, and in nothing is it perhaps so markedly constant as its devotion to wonder at created things, and its profound sense that that wonder is above almost everything else a spiritual good not to be lost.' A fantasy like the Lord of the Rings can help us not only to imagine wonder, but realize it by returning to our world and seeing it afresh. It offers renewal not through escapism, but reconnection.''

Defending Middle-earth- Tolkien: Myth and Modernity by Patrick Curry.

Ye! utuvienves! Yes, dear professor Tolkien i have found it and it is you. And through you i have found myself. Thank you beyond words.

....O! Water is fair that leaps on high in a fountain white beneath the sky; but never did fountain sound so sweet as splashing Hot Water with my feet!

.......{({(SPLASH})})

(This are my tributes from the past two years. I am a bit ill and cannot at the moment contribute a new one. My apologies.) ''Sam put his ragged orc-cloak under his master's head, and covered them both with the grey robe of Lorien; and as he did so his thoughts went out to that fair land, and to the Elves, and he hoped that the cloth woven by their hands might have some virtue to keep them hidden beyond all hope in this wilderness of fear...But their luck held, and for the rest of that day they met no living or moving thing; and when night fell they vanished into the darkess of Mordor.'' - - -rotk, chapter III

May the grace of Manwė let us soar with eagle's wings! In the air, among the clouds in the sky Here is where the birds of Manwe fly Looking at the land, and the water that flows The true beauty of earth shows With the stars of Varda lighting my way In all the realms this is where I stay In the realm of Manwė Sślimo